Help! Inherited A Collection....

I just inherited a stamp collection from an uncle who passed away. He was a collector since a small child because my grandmother was a collector as well. There are thousands of stamps. Some are loose, some in books, lots are mint and there are hundreds in individual see through envelopes....I am so confused. It's absolutely amazing but I have no idea where to start to figure out what to do with it all??? Please help me. Thank you

First Welcome to the forum! You definitely came to the right place! You can always take pictures or scans of some of it and post them and maybe we can help you a bit with it but good advice is to go to your local library and get reference material like a Scott catalog to help get things in order. I'm sure someone will chime in with great info for you. Don't get discouraged look at it like an adventure! Take care ~Jeff

Welcome Clueless.

There are a couple of good threads in here on sorting stamp collections out. Mosey on over to the handy search box, and you're off.

Ask whatever comes to mind (you'll rapidly become less clueless like the rest of us)!

I started by sorting into countries for starters. then pick a country you want to start with. I highly recommend obtaining a set of catalogs (Scott is the one we tend to use in the US/Canada). You can probably get away with a used set that is 5 to 6 years old unless you have current stuff you are worried about. Except for the values (which don't change that fast) the older ones work just as well as the current set, and can be found fairly cheap.

I use a set of vario-pages in a binder to then sort the stamps of that country into a semblance of order.

And of course, for those ones you have trouble with, please scan them and post a question with the scan in the forums. Besides...


(Edited to note that ILS clearly types faster than I do ).

Same here I inherited a stamp collection from my uncle. His came with 6 Large Albums, 8 shoe box's filled with separated stamps, several box's of loose stamps, as well as supplies and several years of unopened updated inserts.

First thing I did was get rid of the outdated supplies, put the updates in the albums. Then set about combining his collection which was more extensive than mine and my collection.

I decided my main collection would be the USA, Austria, and Ireland as my main focus. I got every thing combined, mounted in new showgard mounts, and inventoried extra's. Took me several months but those are done.

Now I am working on other countries.... Yup my collecting has taken over my spare time I used to surf the net and watch TV with. But dang it's fun.

And I have added to my collection as well, via the net filling in those missing stamps, buying old albums adding them, soon I hope to be trading regularly here... as I get every thing more organized.

One thing to remember, the folks are great here in giving advice, sharing ideas and helping if you simply ask them.